Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, agricultural industry changes and bank foreclosures forcing tenant farmers out of work. Due to their nearly hopeless situation, and in part because they are trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California. Along with thousands of other "Okies", they seek jobs, land, dignity, and a future.

The Grapes of Wrath is frequently read in American high school and college literature classes due to its historical context and enduring legacy.[6][7] A celebrated Hollywoodfilm version, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford, was made in 1940.

Contents

The narrative begins just after Tom Joad is paroled from McAlester prison, where he had been imprisoned after being convicted of homicide. On his return to his home near Sallisaw, Oklahoma, Tom meets former preacher Jim Casy, whom he remembers from his childhood, and the two travel together. When they arrive at Tom's childhood farm home, they find it deserted. Disconcerted and confused, Tom and Casy meet their old neighbor, Muley Graves, who tells them the family has gone to stay at Uncle John Joad's home nearby. Graves tells them that the banks have evicted all the farmers, but he refuses to leave the area.

The next morning, Tom and Casy go to Uncle John's. Tom finds his family loading their remaining possessions into a Hudson Motor Car Company saloon converted to a truck; with their crops destroyed by the Dust Bowl, the family has defaulted on their bank loans, and their farm has been repossessed. Consequently, the Joads have no option but to seek work in California, described in handbills as fruitful and offering high pay.

The Joads put everything they have into making the journey. Although leaving Oklahoma would violate his parole, Tom decides it is worth the risk, and invites Casy to join him and his family.

Traveling west on Route 66, the Joad family find the road crowded with other migrants. In makeshift camps, they hear many stories from others, some returning from California, and the group worries about lessening prospects. The family unit dwindles, too: Granpa dies along the road, and they bury him in a field; Granma dies close to the California state line; and both Noah (the eldest Joad son) and Connie Rivers (the husband of the pregnant Joad daughter, Rose of Sharon) split from the family. Led by Ma, the remaining members realize they can only continue, as nothing is left for them in Oklahoma.

Reaching California, they find the state oversupplied with labor, so wages are low, and workers are exploited to the point of starvation. The big corporate farmers are in collusion, and smaller farmers suffer from collapsing prices. Weedpatch Camp, one of the clean, utility-supplied camps operated by the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal agency, offers better conditions, but does not have enough resources to care for all the needy families. Nonetheless, as a Federal facility, the camp protects the migrants from harassment by California deputies.

“

How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him – he has known a fear beyond every other.

”

— Chapter 19

In response to the exploitation, Casy becomes a labor organizer and tries to recruit for a labor union. The remaining Joads work as strikebreakers in a peach orchard, where Casy is involved in a strike that eventually turns violent. When Tom Joad witnesses Casy's fatal beating, he kills the attacker and flees as a fugitive. The Joads later leave the orchard for a cotton farm, where Tom is at risk of being arrested for the homicide.

Tom bids his mother farewell and promises to work for the oppressed. Rose of Sharon's baby is stillborn. Ma Joad remains steadfast and forces the family through the bereavement. With rain, the Joads' dwelling is flooded, and they move to higher ground. In the final chapter of the book, the family takes shelter from the flood in an old barn. Inside, they find a young boy and his father, who is dying of starvation. Rose of Sharon takes pity on the man and offers him her breast, to save him from starvation.

Tom Joad: Protagonist of the story; the Joad family's second son, named after his father. Later on, Tom takes leadership of the family even though he is young.

Ma Joad: Matriarch. Practical and warm-spirited, she tries to hold the family together. Her given name is never learned; it is suggested that her maiden name was Hazlett.

Pa Joad: Patriarch, also named Tom, age 50. Hardworking sharecropper and family man. Pa becomes a broken man upon losing his livelihood and means of supporting his family, forcing Ma to assume leadership.

Uncle John Joad: Pa Joad's older brother (Tom describes him as "a fella about 60", but in narrative he is described as 50). He felt guilty about the death of his young wife years before, and has been prone to binges involving alcohol and prostitutes, but is generous with his goods.

Jim Casy: A former preacher who lost his faith. He is a Christ-like figure and is based on Ed Ricketts.

Al Joad: The second youngest son, a "smart-aleck sixteen-year-older" who cares mainly for cars and girls; he looks up to Tom, but begins to find his own way.

Rose of Sharon Joad Rivers: Childish and dreamy teenage daughter (18) who develops into a mature woman. She symbolizes regrowth when she helps the starving stranger (see also Roman Charity, works of art based on the legend of a daughter as wet nurse to her dying father). Pregnant in the beginning of the novel, she delivers a stillborn baby, perhaps due to malnutrition.

Connie Rivers: Rose of Sharon's husband. Nineteen years old and naïve, he is overwhelmed by marriage and impending fatherhood; he abandons his wife shortly after they arrive in California.

Noah Joad: The oldest son, he is the first to leave the family, planning to live off fishing on the Colorado River. Injured at birth and described as "strange", he may have slight learning difficulties.

Grampa Joad: Tom's grandfather, who expresses his strong desire to stay in Oklahoma. His full name is given as William James Joad. Grampa is drugged by his family with "soothin' syrup" to force him to leave, but he dies the first evening on the road. Casy attributes his death to a stroke but says that Grampa is "jus' stayin' with the lan'. He couldn' leave it."

Granma Joad: Grampa Joad's religious wife; she loses her will to live after his death. She dies while the family is crossing the Mojave Desert.

Ruthie Joad: The youngest daughter, age twelve. She is shown to be reckless and childish. Quarreling with another child, she reveals Tom in hiding.

Winfield Joad: The youngest male in the family, age ten, "kid-wild and calfish".

Jim Rawley: Manages the camp at Weedpatch, he shows the Joads surprising favor.

Muley Graves: A neighbor of the Joads'; he is invited to come along to California with them but refuses. The family leave two of their dogs with him; a third they take but it is killed by a car during their travels. .

Ivy and Sairy Wilson: Migrants from Kansas, they attend the death of Grampa and share the journey as far as the California state line.

Mr. Wainwright: The father of Aggie Wainwright and husband of Mrs. Wainwright. Worries over his daughter Aggie.

This is the beginning—from "I" to "we". If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I", and cuts you off forever from the "we".

— Chapter 14

Steinbeck was known to have borrowed from field notes taken during 1938 by Farm Security Administration worker and author Sanora Babb. While Babb collected personal stories about the lives of the displaced migrants for a novel she was developing, her supervisor, Tom Collins, shared her reports with Steinbeck, then working at the San Francisco News.[8] Babb's own novel, Whose Names Are Unknown, was eclipsed in 1939 by the success of The Grapes of Wrath and was shelved until it was finally published in 2004, a year before Babb's death.

The Grapes of Wrath developed from The Harvest Gypsies, a series of seven articles that ran in the San Francisco News, from October 5 to 12, 1936. The newspaper commissioned that work on migrant workers from the Midwest in California's agriculture industry. (It was later compiled and published separately.[9])[10]

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

These lyrics refer, in turn, to the biblical passage Revelation 14:19–20, an apocalyptic appeal to divine justice and deliverance from oppression in the final judgment. This and other biblical passages had inspired a long tradition of imagery of Christ in the winepress, in various media.

And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.

The phrase also appears at the end of chapter 25 in The Grapes of Wrath, which describes the purposeful destruction of food to keep the price high:

and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

The image invoked by the title serves as a crucial symbol in the development of both the plot and the novel's greater thematic concerns: from the terrible winepress of Dust Bowl oppression will come terrible wrath but also the deliverance of workers through their cooperation. This is suggested but not realized within the novel.

When preparing to write the novel, Steinbeck wrote: "I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this [the Great Depression and its effects]." He famously said, "I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags." This work won a large following among the working class due to Steinbeck's sympathy for the migrants and workers' movement, and his accessible prose style.[12]

Steinbeck scholar John Timmerman sums up the book's influence: "The Grapes of Wrath may well be the most thoroughly discussed novel – in criticism, reviews, and college classrooms – of 20th century American literature."[10]The Grapes of Wrath is referred to as a Great American Novel.[13]

The book was noted for Steinbeck's passionate depiction of the plight of the poor, and many of his contemporaries attacked his social and political views. Bryan Cordyack writes, "Steinbeck was attacked as a propagandist and a socialist from both the left and the right of the political spectrum. The most fervent of these attacks came from the Associated Farmers of California; they were displeased with the book's depiction of California farmers' attitudes and conduct toward the migrants. They denounced the book as a 'pack of lies' and labeled it 'communist propaganda'".[10] Some accused Steinbeck of exaggerating camp conditions to make a political point. Steinbeck had visited the camps well before publication of the novel[15] and argued their inhumane nature destroyed the settlers' spirit.

The book was quickly made into a famed, 1940 Hollywood movie of the same name directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda as Tom Joad. The first part of the film version follows the book fairly accurately. However, the second half and the ending, in particular, differ significantly from the book. John Springer, author of The Fondas (Citadel, 1973), said of Henry Fonda and his role in film version of The Grapes of Wrath: "The Great American Novel made one of the few enduring Great American Motion Pictures."[19]

^The official publication date of April 14, 1939, was exactly four years to the day of the Black Sunday Storm, among the worst Dust Bowl dust storms which, in real life, caused Oklahomans to migrate to California in search of work.

^ abc"1939 Book Awards Given by Critics: Elgin Groseclose's 'Ararat' is Picked as Work Which Failed to Get Due Recognition", The New York Times, February 14, 1940, page 25. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851–2007).

^Published by the Simon S. Lubin Society of California as a pamphlet entitled "Their Blood is Strong." Republished 1988 by Heyday as "The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath." Source: Cordyack.

^Dana, Gioia. "The Grapes of Wrath Radio Show – Transcript". The Big Read. The National Endowment for the Arts. Retrieved 2010-09-22. Writer Richard Rodriguez discussed The Grapes of Wrath as The Great American Novel: "There hasn't been anything like this novel since it was written. And this is the great American novel that everyone keeps waiting for but it has been written now."

^Lisca, Peter (1958). "The Wide World of John Steinbeck". Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Sobchack, Vivian C. "The Grapes of Wrath (1940): Thematic Emphasis Through Visual Style". American Quarterly 1979 31(5): 596–615. ISSN0003-0678 Fulltext: in Jstor. Discusses the visual style of John Ford's cinematic adaptation of the novel. Usually the movie is examined in terms of its literary roots or its social protest. But the imagery of the film reveals the important theme of the Joad family's coherence. The movie shows the family in closeups, cramped in small spaces on a cluttered screen, isolated from the land and their surroundings. Dim lighting helps abstract the Joad family from the reality of Dust Bowl migrants. The film's emotional and aesthetic power comes from its generalized quality attained through this visual style.

"The Grapes of Wrath revisited," (videos) The Guardian [Chris McGreal journeys along Route 66 – following the path of the Joads, of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, to compare that account of the Great Depression with today's United States under President Barack Obama.